Preying for keeps

35

Skater and his team caught the monorail at the Belmont Avenue station. Midnight was still eleven minutes away when they boarded.

The original Seattle monorail had been destroyed in 2036 during the Night of Rage, and since been rebuilt. Where it had once risen only eight meters off the ground and traveled along a linear track, the new monorail operated on a maglev propulsion system that circled the inner city four stories above the streets. Two trains worked twenty-four hours a day, passing each other in opposite directions. At the front of the trains were the bullet-nosed control stations that regulated the magnetic fields generated that pulled the train along the superconductive metal rail housed in the center of the track. The original monorail had been built for the 1962 World's Fair, and had sailed along an electrified track. With the new maglev system, the trains could never be sabotaged by someone simply shutting down the electricity.

The station was raucous even at this late hour. Few innocents were abroad because the thriller gangs ruled the night and the streets of the inner city. Dressed in their colors, they pushed and shoved at each other, laughing when someone got mad and took a real swing. A knife flashed as Trey reached back to help Ariadne Silverstaff into the monorail car, and one of the thrillers went down with a blade buried in his gut. His companions boarded the next car up from the shadowrunners and yelled obscenities as the downed ganger dragged himself away, leaving a bloody trail.

A double row of seats ran down either side of the car, with synthleather loops hanging from the ceiling for passengers who had to stand. In the mornings and afternoons, the monorails were crowded with commuter traffic. Now, the weak lights barely illuminated the interior of the car.

Trey led Ariadne to a seat, then sat beside her, keeping up a calm and cool front to reassure her. The woman's face had blanched while as they waited for the train and she still looked pale.

Archangel moved immediately to a corner in the back of the car and removed an access plate, quickly dropping a tap into the car's emergency com and booting up her deck, hidden inside a scarred orange toolbox.

"Please secure all items and keep hands and feet inside the cars," the pleasant male voice recording announced over the intercom systems.

With a lurch and a hiss, the monorail took off.

Skater jerked with the sudden acceleration. Adrenaline was pounding inside him, setting him on die razor's edge of awareness. The boosted reflexes were only a heartbeat away.

The monorail car was twenty' meters long, three meters high so most trolls only had to duck slightly, and seven meters across. On the outside, it looked like a flat-gray sausage and bore the blue pattern of Line Two. Line One cars were painted with red patterns. The colors were always layered over with graffiti, and the city had given up trying to keep the trains unmarked. Emergency access doors were at either end, and were never supposed to be opened without authorization. Usually, at night, that rule was violated,

There were four other passengers in the car, all of them looking like late-shift workers just trying to survive the trip home. None of them looked like McKenzie's people. But then, Skater supposed, none of them would.

"Something wrong with this car?" a slender girl asked. She wore ripped clothing, had her face pierced above both eyebrows and through one side of her mouth, and sported a brilliant chartreuse bowl cut. Her eyes were dead behind the rectangular sunglasses.

"No," Skater replied. "Regular monthly maintenance."

"And it takes four of you?"

Skater looked at her. "It's not exactly safe."

"Yeah." The girl showed him a bloodthirsty grin. "No drek." She leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

Looking out the smeared and streaked windows. Skater watched the sprawl pass by four stories below. He seldom rode the monorail. Larisa had liked it, but it always left him feeling exposed and vulnerable. The train wound between some of the buildings, and soared over others, moving along the support track.

During the day, it took almost forty-five minutes to circle the city, even with the automated stops and locked doors keeping the lines moving. But at night the time was nearly halved.

Skater accessed his headlink to make sure they hadn't been jammed as they approached the King Street Station.

"We're ready," Duran reported.

The ork, Wheeler, and Elvis were further back in the train, waiting to back up the play.

Skater glanced at Archangel, and she gave him a nod. Her spot offered some protection and would keep her out of sight for awhile.

The monorail eased to a stop. The automated voice announced the station and opened the doors.

Three of the passengers off-loaded, leaving the young girl behind.

Skater unfurled a TEMPORARILY CLOSED FOR MAINTENANCE banner with suction cups at the four corners and affixed it to the windows. He walked to the door and turned away a half-dozen passengers and pointed to the sign. They grumbled but moved on. Still blocking the door, he turned to the girl and said, "I'm afraid you're going to have to find another car for the rest of your trip."

"I like it here just fine."

Skater gave her a hard look. "You'll like it more somewhere else, or you'll have to catch the next circuit."

"Fragging ditbrained sprawl service-drone," the girl muttered as she gathered her bag and pushed herself up. She ignored the door and used the forward emergency exit to get into the next car.

'There he is," Ariadne said. She was looking through the window.

Peering through the gloom of the King Street Station, Skater saw Tavis Silverstaff walking hurriedly toward the monorail car.

The elf was dressed in casual wear that had already drawn a pack of Cutter thrillers, their gold and green colors marking them even in the shadows. Silverstaff merely ignored them, stepping quickly into the car.

"Hold it right there," Skater said, unzipping his jumpsuit to get at his Predator in its shoulder leather. He wore Kevlar under the jumpsuit as well, and he was already sweating with the heat of it.

Silverstaff froze in the center of the car, his eyes locked on his wife.

Trey moved slightly, revealing the pistol he was holding.

The thrillers tried to follow Silverstaff into the car, but Skater stepped in front of them, blocking the way. "Car's closed," he said, indicating the banner in the window.

The lead Cutter was a gap-toothed male with sandy hair that looked like it had been styled by a blind man wielding a lawn edger. "Think you can keep all of us out?" he taunted.

Skater lifted the Predator and shoved it between the thriller's eyes. "You won't be around to know."

Angry noises started in the back, egging the leader on. But he didn't move, even after the canned message about the doors started up. As the train pulled away from the station. Skater put the pistol away and turned to Silverstaff.

"You've got the credstick?" he asked.

"Yes." Silverstaff reached inside his jacket and pulled out the ebony rod. "I received the payment earlier. The credstick holds the stock. Your DNA is locked into the access codes."

Skater plucked the credstick from the man's fingers. He'd already sensed the shadows gathering on the other side of the emergency exit when he heard Elvis's warning over his headware.

"It's happening," the troll samurai said. "They've got guys coming at you from both ends."

Wheeler had replaced the monorail's dog-brain remote control with the one he’d rebuilt at the suite. As a result of the new dog-brain interface-equipped with masking utilities courtesy of Archangel so the replacement wouldn't be detected by the main transport CPU downtown-the dwarf rigger not only had access to the monorail's controls, but the security cameras as well. The other members of the team could see everything that was going on in all the cars.

"We're on our way," Duran promised.

Over Silverstaff's shoulder. Skater saw the front emergency door yanked outward. He drew the Predator again and pointed it at Silverstaff. He also look advantage of the confusion long enough to switch the credstick for the one Archangel had prepared.

"I told you to come alone," Skater told Silverstaff.

Ten yabos filled that side of the car, pulling weapons. They were obviously McKenzie's muscle.

"Skater," Trey called, playing out his part of the scenario. He stood up facing the rear door to the car, holding his gun out and using Ariadne as a shield.

"I see them."

"We're almost there, chummer," Elvis said over the Crypto Circuit. The sound of the wind whipped in over his transmission, blotting out some of the words.

Skater knew Elvis, Wheeler, and Duran were by now making their way across the top of the train. He couldn't stop them, because the train would be pulling into another station soon and the passengers getting on or off would give them away. They were only two cars away; things would have to happen quick.

Grabbing Silverstaff, Skater jammed the pistol to the elf's head. "Stay back," he warned, "or I'm going to start a direct oxygen feed to his wetware."

A scarred man with big hands just smiled and said, "Don't mean nothing to us, drekhead. You're the joker we want."

"Don't hurt my wife," Silverstaff said to Skater. "Please. I didn't know anything about this."

Skater glanced around the car, seeing that they'd garnered interest from people in the cars ahead and behind them. Some of those passengers had begun to file out, moving in the other direction from the yabos filling the cars. The monorail kept clattering along. Archangel had jacked into her deck and lay slumped out of sight between the seats. Trey had turned and, like Skater, had dropped back to the center of the car, menacing the yabos at his end with a pistol.

"He didn't know anything about this," someone said.

Then the yabos in front of Skater parted ranks, letting Conrad McKenzie pass through. As before, his outward appearance was elegant, but carried an undercurrent of potential threat, like a well-oiled pistol on display.

Skater lifted the Predator and aimed it at McKenzie. In response, every hostile gun in the car was directed at him.

"If you're smart," the Mafia man said, "you'll put away your popgun before you get hurt unnecessarily."

"You walked in here," Skater pointed out. "Maybe we can just be dumb together this once and sort it out in hell."

McKenzie removed his fedora. "Look, punk, you can't hurt me, and I don't need to hurt you." He shrugged. "Of course, I don't need to not hurt you either."

Skater didn't put the gun away, but he did keep Silverstaff in front of him, playing the role to the hilt. He knew McKenzie wouldn't want to hurt the elf if he didn't have to.

"Silverstaff didn't know I was coming," McKenzie said. "I invited myself." He took a seat near the front exit, making himself comfortable even with the gun pointed at his face.

"What are you doing here?" Silverstaff demanded.

"He had your line tapped," Skater said. "If you didn't invite him, how else would he be here?"

"You're smart. Skater." McKenzie' said evenly. "I like that. I guess I have you to thank for tipping the media that ReGEN wasn't as solid as everyone wanted to believe. Of course you kind of balanced the scales with that other biz today.”

Skater didn't answer.

"We're here, kid," Duran whispered in his head.

Skater shifted behind Silverstaff. "Wait," he subvocalized.

"I managed to acquire a lot more stock that way," McKenzie continued. "And with the way the prices skyrocketed today, I was able to do a lot of laundry by selling the stock to other fronts of mine. By the time my accounts quit looping all the profit involved, I'll be sitting pretty."

"What's all this?" Silverstaff asked.

"He's been buying up ReGEN stock," Skater said.

McKenzie applauded silently, like a teacher rewarding a struggling student. "I'd wondered how much you'd put together once the stock prices dropped. When they rose again today, and you told Silverstaff you'd cut a deal with Lofwyr, I figured you had most of it."

"My team and I raided the Seahawk because of information McKenzie leaked through a sleaze named Tone," Slater told Silverstaff. "But the files we boosted from the freighter were trashed, nothing of use on them."

That's not possible," Silverstaff said. "We downloaded those files onto the mainframe at ReGEN."

"Not the same files," Skater said. "He set us up, even sicced the yakuza on us by giving them the same information.”

"A little later, of course," McKenzie said. "I knew the yaks'd crack the files soon enough and realize they'd been had. You, on the other hand, I thought were without resources. Even after you'd discovered the files were just so much drek, I never thought you'd be able to use that information. Not even to save yourselves. Apparently I was wrong."

"Not from Jack of trying," Skater said.

"You made me think those files had been compromised," Silverstaff said to McKenzie. "Why?"

"Because he knew you were vulnerable." Skater said. "If you didn't get the tissue replacement into production pronto, you'd lose everything. And in order to finance a crash program, you'd have to sell stock. If you got desperate enough and sold enough, he could make a fortune."

McKenzie grinned at Silverstaff. "Afraid so. Me and you, we're going to be partners for a long lime. The seven thousand shares of stock on that credstick will put me over the top with fifty-three percent ownership of ReGEN." He shifted his harsh gaze over to Skater. "Hand it over."

Skater didn't answer for a moment. "I do and there's nothing to keep you from killing me."

"There's nothing to keep me from killing you now," McKenzie said. "All I've got to do is take that credstick off your corpse."

Releasing his hold on Silverstaff, Skater held up the credstick in his free hand. The anger was moving in him now, but he kept it in a controlled flow. "Not if I destroy it. I don't think you'll find Silverstaff so quick to cut another one of these."

"Sure he would. I've got his wife. I've got you. He does what I tell him to, he gets to live." McKenzie paused. "Just like you. Getting the credstick tonight will be convenient, nothing more."

"That's why you're here," Skater said, "because it's convenient?"

"I'm here because it's about time both of you learned who the frag you're dealing with." McKenzie softened his voice, then laughed. "We've been pretty good partners until now, Skater. I don't want to have to kill you."

Skater knew it was a lie. He and the rest of the team represented loose ends. He wrapped his free arm around Silverstaff's neck, then screwed the muzzle into the man's temple again. "I give you the credstick, but I keep Silverstaff. Until we're safely off the train. If Silverstaff turns up dead, things ai ReGEN are going to be up for grabs for a long time, no matter how much stock you think you own."

Mckenzie nodded. "Deal."

Skater flipped him the credstick and it turned through the air until one of McKenzie's big hands snatched it.